KPMG: 92% of Tech Execs Say Managing AI Agents Is Core Skill by 2031

Ninety-two percent of tech executives surveyed say managing AI agents will become a critical skill within the next five years, according to KPMG’s 2026 Global Tech Report. The same report, drawn from 2,500 executives across 27 countries, projects that digital assistants will make up 36% of core technology teams by 2027, up from 28% in 2025, with high performers expecting about half of their tech teams to remain permanent human staff.

Those numbers are striking. The qualifications buried underneath them are the actual story. Adoption is broad, return on investment is narrow, and the 92% is a forecast of what executives think will matter rather than a measurement of what they are delivering today.

Why 92% Say Managing AI Agents Will Be a Core Skill

KPMG’s Global Tech Report 2026, titled “Leading in the Intelligence Age,” frames the next five years as a workforce reckoning. The 92% figure does not describe what AI agent management looks like today. It describes what executives expect it to look like by 2031, per the full KPMG Global Tech Report 2026 landing page.

Zack Kass, a global AI advisor and former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI, set the frame in the report. “The future will not be defined by what machines can do. It will be defined by what we want machines to do,” Kass said.

That framing, from someone who helped build OpenAI’s commercial motion, sets up a workforce problem that procurement alone cannot solve. If the question is what an organisation wants AI agents to do, the people answering it need judgment, governance instinct, and a feel for which workflows to automate and which to leave alone.

The report’s own data underlines how far most organisations are from that posture. Only 11% of tech leaders say they have reached the highest level of technology maturity today, even though half expect to get there in 2026. KPMG describes the working model that high performers are converging on as “small, durable human cores” orchestrating “large AI-augmented ecosystems.” The skill demand is rising faster than the operating model that supports it.

The 24% Behind the 88%

Eighty-eight percent of organisations are already investing in agentic AI, and 74% say their AI use cases are delivering business value, per KPMG’s January 2026 press release on the Global Tech Report. Those numbers sit comfortably in every agentic AI sales deck of the last twelve months.

The figure that interrupts the story is 24%. That is the share of organisations that say they are scaling AI and achieving ROI across multiple use cases. Separately, 24% of organisations sit at the highest level of AI maturity today, against 68% who aim to reach it by the end of 2026. KPMG’s data suggests the gap between investment and value capture is wide, and not closing on its own.

Gartner, in Gartner’s June 2025 forecast on agentic AI project cancellations, predicted that more than 40% of agentic AI projects would be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of escalating costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls. “Most agentic AI projects right now are early stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied,” Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, said at the time. Steve Chase, KPMG’s vice chair of AI and digital innovation, framed the same shift the other way: in KPMG’s quarterly AI Pulse Survey, the share of organisations at full agent deployment moved from 11% to about one-third across two consecutive quarters. On the cost side, the same gap shows up in different numbers, as KPMG finding that 74% of companies cannot track AI token costs demonstrates, with Uber draining its annual AI budget in four months cited as a concrete example.

• 92% expect managing AI agents to be a critical skill within five years
• 88% are already investing in building agentic AI into their systems
• 74% say their AI use cases are delivering business value
• 24% are scaling AI and achieving ROI across multiple use cases
• 68% aim to reach the highest level of AI maturity by the end of 2026
• 53% still lack the talent needed to deliver their digital transformation plans

Where the Talent Shortage Stalls the Rollout

The 53% talent gap is the variable that ties the optimism to the execution risk. KPMG’s report ties it directly to the human staffing line: organisations expect 42% of their tech workforce to remain permanent human staff by 2027, only a five-point drop from 2025. High performers, the cohort KPMG defines by advanced tech maturity, process maturity, and consistent value delivery, plan to retain 50% of their tech teams in permanent human roles through 2027.

The pattern is not a mass layoff story. It is a workforce composition story, and the 53% talent shortage sits behind it. Without the people who can manage agents, the agents do not get managed at all. Noelle Russell, an AI solutions architect and strategic advisor quoted in the report, made the point in operational terms: “Pick the areas that you want to keep in-house for domain expertise, then choose trusted partners to fill in the gaps across your portfolio. Paying attention to what you build means applying rigor and discipline to every model you select.” Zack Kass, on organisational shape, was more direct. His recommendation in the report: smaller teams, flatter structures, more agility. The high performers reporting 4.5x ROI against an industry average of 2x have already moved in that direction.

Play smaller, and you can be more forward-looking.

Zack Kass, global AI advisor and former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI, in KPMG’s Global Tech Report 2026.

Where the Workforce Goes Next

KPMG frames the next two years as a team-mix shift rather than a hiring freeze. Digital assistants are projected to make up 36% of core technology teams by 2027, up from 28% in 2025. The permanent human share moves the other way, but only slightly, a five-point drop across two years. The composition change is real, and modest at the same time. Eighty-eight percent of organisations are investing, and 42% of their tech workforce is still expected to be permanent human staff by 2027.

For high performers, the mix holds at about half permanent human staff by 2027, which KPMG describes as small, durable human cores orchestrating large AI-augmented ecosystems. That is the operating model the survey keeps pointing toward: a smaller human centre directing a wider agent layer, with the human role shifting toward judgment and governance.

The mechanics vary by function, but the direction does not. The KPMG report argues the move from individual productivity to enterprise-wide value is where the next gain sits, and that move is gated by people who can decide which workflows are worth handing to agents. The skills being asked of that smaller human core are technical fluency, vendor evaluation, governance, and the rigor and discipline Russell named in the report.

Bigger Strategic Bets Beyond Agentic AI

Beyond agentic AI, the same executive sample is signalling appetite for risk. Seventy-eight percent agree they must take more risks on emerging technologies to stay relevant, and quantum computing sits high on that list. 41% of executives told KPMG they are worried their organisations are falling behind in preparing for quantum-related encryption threats.

The security and governance layer around agentic AI is where that risk appetite meets reality. Russell’s warning in the report was that the discipline to choose AI models well is rare. The same concern shows up in regulatory pressure outside the survey: AI accountability actions from Five Eyes, Munich, and Illinois arrived within a single week of June 2026, with the Five Eyes advisory telling boards to treat AI cyber risk as a core business responsibility, a Munich court holding Google directly liable for false AI Overview claims, and the Illinois General Assembly passing SB 315 with penalties of up to $3 million per violation. Operators who treat AI deployment as a customer-experience question are now dealing with a courtroom, a statehouse, and a Five Eyes intelligence bulletin in the same month.

Ninety percent of technology executives told KPMG they plan to expand and strengthen partnerships to access external expertise, and 90% plan to grow partnerships and tech ecosystems over the next year, even as 53% still lack the talent to deliver. Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and chief executive officer of Uniphore, argued in the report that the partnership wave is not optional. “Companies that learn to use AI and AI agents and all these architectures effectively are likely to leave their peer groups behind,” Sachdev said. “Right now that is coming down to the leadership of companies and departments and teams.”

The 92% who expect managing AI agents to be a core skill by 2031 have five years to convert that forecast into operating muscle. The 24% already scaling for ROI, and the high performers retaining half their tech teams as permanent human staff, are the working models the rest of the field is being measured against.

We stand at the threshold of the Intelligence Age, a period defined by an unprecedented pace of innovation and profound uncertainty, where technology is no longer just a tool, but a force reshaping the very fabric of business and society.

Guy Holland, Global Leader of the CIO Center of Excellence at KPMG International, in KPMG’s Global Tech Report 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did KPMG’s Global Tech Report 2026 find about managing AI agents?

KPMG’s Global Tech Report 2026, based on a survey of 2,500 tech executives from 27 countries and released on 22 January 2026, found that 92% of organisations expect managing AI agents to become a critical skill within the next five years. The figure is a forecast for 2031, not a measurement of current capability. It is one of several data points the report ties to workforce composition changes by 2027.

How many tech executives are investing in agentic AI?

Eighty-eight percent of organisations surveyed by KPMG said they are already investing in building agentic AI into their systems. Seventy-four percent said their AI use cases were delivering business value. Only 24% said they were scaling AI and achieving ROI across multiple use cases. KPMG’s quarterly AI Pulse Survey has tracked this deployment share quarter by quarter since 2024.

Why is the AI talent gap holding companies back?

Fifty-three percent of organisations surveyed told KPMG they still lack the talent needed to bring their digital transformation plans to life. The same report projects that 42% of the tech workforce will remain permanent human staff by 2027, a five-point drop from 2025, and high performers plan to retain 50%.

How will tech team composition change by 2027?

Digital assistants are projected to make up 36% of core technology teams by 2027. That figure is up from 28% in 2025. Permanent human tech staff is expected to drop five points from its 2025 level to 42% by 2027. High performers in KPMG’s sample plan to retain 50% of their tech workforce in permanent human roles through 2027.

What does KPMG say about quantum and emerging technology risks?

Forty-one percent of executives surveyed told KPMG they were worried about falling behind in preparing for quantum-related encryption threats. Seventy-eight percent agreed they must take more risks on emerging technologies to stay relevant. Ninety percent plan to grow partnerships and tech ecosystems over the next year.